Recently, as industries and economies have rapidly developed, the use of battery, which is also called a storage battery, is correspondingly increased together with the use of electricity which may allow such development.
Generally, a battery is also referred to as a storage battery or a secondary battery and refers to a storage device in which a chemical substance (for example, sulfuric acid) which is present in the battery is electrolyzed by a chemical action with two plates such as a copper plate and a zinc plate to generate electrical energy and the electrical energy is stored or output.
The battery includes a positive (+) electrode (anode) and a negative (−) electrode (cathode) and electric current flows into the battery through the positive electrode and flows out through the negative electrode.
In the meantime, such batteries may be connected in series by sequentially connecting the positive electrodes and the negative electrodes of a plurality of batteries so that the batteries have the same current value and may be connected in parallel by connecting the positive electrode to the positive electrode and the negative electrode to the negative electrode of the plurality of batteries so that the batteries have the same voltage value.
In this case, a state of charge of battery is determined to have a predetermined value so that the battery cannot be used unlimitedly. Therefore, the battery is used to be connected to an external power supply at ordinary times or is connected to a different type of battery to be charged so that a driving body such as a motor which is connected with the battery is smoothly driven.
However, in the case of a battery management apparatus of the related art, a maximum driving distance of a vehicle in which a lithium ion battery having a capacity of 24 kWh is applied is only 160 km. Further, even when a battery having 250 Wh/kg which is a maximum allowable energy density of the lithium ion battery is used, the maximum driving distance is only approximately 300 km. This does not reach 500 km which is the maximum driving distance of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, and thus energy efficiency is degraded.
Therefore, in order to solve the problems of the above-described battery management apparatus of the related art, the inventor has been made in an effort to provide a battery management apparatus and method which are capable of selectively controlling a battery which supplies power to a driving body according to various circumstances by using a plurality of batteries to exchange power while an overall size of the batteries is the same as the size of a battery of the related art.